Saturn storms + Transit & shadow transit of Rhea

[Quark]

Hi All,

Was 9/10 cloud until 10:30 pm CSST last night but then it cleared and provided me with very good seeing right through to my final capture at 3:10 am CSST this morning.

I was hoping to track down the source of a SED's (Saturn Electrostatic Discharge) outburst that started a couple of weeks ago. The wet weather had curtailed my search until last night.

I have 30 avi's that are very nice quality that will take a week or so to process properly. To have something to post tonight I have been doing fast and rather rough processing on some of the data.

There is a cloud feature in the SEBZ and while I was capturing data there was a transit and shadow transit of Rhea. There is also a storm in the STrZ this region is known as Storm Alley and has been the source of the major storm of the last couple of years. The storm in the STrZ is just above the shadow of Rhea.

I quickly processed the R channels of these images and loaded them into WinJUPOS to get accurate positional data for the cloud features and storm, WinJUPOS also verifies the positions of Rhea and its shadow which I have marked in on one image.

I have attached 4 RGB images plus an animation of 7 RGB's, there is a lot happening in the animation.

This data is very good and it is a shame to post it, as I have, without putting the effort in to extract all that I can, I apologize for this but it will take considerable time to fully process all of this data. I sort of feel the need to sleep coming on, I have not been to bed yet from last nights imaging session.

Thanks for looking.
Regards
Trevor

PS: If I have made any blues with my labeling it is due to sleep depredation.

[Troy]

Trevor their is plenty going on in your Saturn images.
Well done :)

[bird]

Excellent images Trevor, hope you get some more good nights like this one!

cheers, Bird

[iceman]

Nice images Trevor, nice and smooth, detailed and good colour.

Nice work!

[duncan]

Terrific set of images Trevor. I'll be happy when i get to that sort of image.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[desler]

Simply stunning Trevor!

Darren

[michaellxv]

Wow, if that is rough processing I am really looking forward to the polished product. The animation really hilights the amount of activity.

[jjjnettie]

Thanks for sharing these with us. I always enjoy your work.

[Clayton]

Very nice results Trevor

[spearo]

love the animation!
well done
frank

[lacad01]

Nice work once again Trevor :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Quark]

Hi All,

Pretty excited, as most here would know, I supply my Saturn data to a researcher on the Cassini RPWS team ( Radio & Plasma Wave Science) who is now at The Austrian Academy of Sciences. He contacted our group on Feb 24th with the news that he had detected a new outbreak of SED's ( Saturn Electrostatic Discharge), lightning. This radio data from the Cassini spacecraft only provides an estimate for the location of the storm and Georg relies on amateur images to actually identify the optical counterpart to the radio data. Only with this can he do his scientific analysis of the dynamics contributing to the source of the SED's.

As I mentioned in my thread this was my first opportunity to image the target region. Georg is really only interested in accurate positional data for the storm, though it is nice to achieve this on a nice image. I did not sleep at all yesterday until I had measured the position accurately with WinJUPOS and sent my data to Georg.

This morning Georg emailed me with the news that the white spot that I have imaged in the STrZ is indeed the source of his SED's outburst, did I mention that I am pretty excited. This really makes the time and effort that I put in most satisfying.

Regards
Trevor

[michaellxv]

Congratulations Trevor. Your getting me all excited reading about it.

[Quark]

Thanks Troy, yep some nice movement with the various bands for sure.




Thanks very much Bird, this was one night where the direct effects of the Peltier was really quite amazing. Each time after I shut down the Pelt & fans, as the air currents stabilized the image just seemed to snap to reveal very crisp detail.



Thanks Mike, I think using Birds ninox program I can do a lot better with this data. What I have posted was processed with the sole purpose of revealing the source of the SED's outburst enough for positional identification to send to Georg Fischer, before I got some sleep.



Thanks very much Duncan, when I originally started with a DSI and then ToUcam my images didn't look much like these. We all have to start somewhere. I think the key is to be fanatical about collimation, focus and mirror temperature and to document everything that you do, every experiment with different setting with a comment on the result.



Thanks so much Darren for your most positive comment, I do appreciate it.



Thanks Michael, good data really does need very little processing, that said, by using Bird ninox program prior to Registax V5 a better result is possible but it takes a lot of time to run 30 avi's through Virtual Dub then ninox prior to Registax and then I do decon in Astra Image Pro and finish off in CS4. Thats fine if I don't have much data or if I have bad weather and don't image often but the norm out here is good weather and it tends to hold up for very long periods so some nights I may image over 4 or even 5 hour periods and end up with massive amounts of data.

I do intend reprocessing all of this data but it will likely take me weeks to do so.



Thanks very much JJJ, glad that you enjoyed these images. Not sure yet, but I may be coming up your way to the Astrofest.



Thanks Clayton, it was great to have some good seeing to coincide with the target region for the SED's being available to me.



Thanks Frank, I must admit that I am most fond of animations with my planetary data, I think it adds to the feel for the dynamics of what is going on.



Thanks Adam, appreciate you comment.

[StephenM]

Great stuff Trevor! Are you the first imager to identify the source of the outburst? It sounds like a really rewarding collaboration you have going.

Cheers,
Stephen

[Quark]

I am so glad that you can relate to how exciting this is. This is one of the great things about astronomy, it is one of the few fields of science where amateurs can make meaningful contributions. Just how cool was it that Bird discovered the impact on Jupiter last year.

[Quark]

Thanks Stephen, apparently not the first, Georg says that Chris Go and Tomio Akutsu from the Philippines have also imaged it. The group that Georg relies on includes, Ralf Vandebergh from the Netherlands, Marc Delcroix from France, Chris Go from the Philippines with Bird and myself from Australia.

Now that this storm has been identified the hard work begins, we will track it to follow how its morphology changes. My experience with these storms is that the brightness often fluctuates and I have seen them even split into multiple smaller storm cells, it is all very interesting.

The first storm that I tracked for Georg lasted for 7 months and I imaged it 169 times. This is where the number of clear nights I get out here in the bush is of such importance. And yes this collaboration is most rewarding, back in 2008 NASA put out a media release naming the members of out group and acknowledging our contribution to the Cassini mission, that certainly made me feel very proud and Georg is a really nice bloke to work with. Numerous times he has sent me research papers he has written to help me get a feel for what is driving these storms.

[Lester]

I can feel your excitement Trevor, and well deserved after all your dedication.

All the best. You remind me of the Energiser add, that just out runs all the other batteries.

Thanks again for the view.

[Quark]

Thanks so much Lester for your very kind words, not sure about having all that much energy though. When I did a rough process of my R channels and realized the significance of what I had I just dosed up on coffee and did a quick process of my 30 avi's so that I could send my data to Georg, he is not really fussed about the esthetic's he just needs to be able to get accurate positional data for the storm, never finished until about 10 pm the next night so I had gone about 48 hours without sleep but then I just crashed.

[duncan]

Hi Trevor

Thanks very much for the advice, now if only this cloud would bugger off!!!!!
Cheers:thumbsup:

[Clayton]

You are a real inspiration to me Trevor, and I'm certain many others as well. Congratulations on your achievement

[hotspur]

This really is amazing,not only fine images,but real reserch data that is then used by professional astronomers for their studies,this type of result,must be a wonderfull feeling for Trevor.

Just wondering if its possible to briefly explain how you measure the storm position accurately.

thank you for sharing.Chris

[Quark]

Always happy to help if I can Duncan, I enjoy my astronomy very much and I think it is great to see others start out on the imaging path, it can be incredibly rewarding.



Thanks very much for your most kind remarks Clayton, we may have a small population but we have many amateur astronomers that do amazing things in quite different fields of astronomy that contribute to astronomy as a whole.



Thanks very much Chris, I do get quite a buzz out of it, especially considering just how isolated from the mainstream it is out here in Broken Hill.

Regards the measurement of positional data, to accurately measure the positions of various features on the planets you need to open WinJUPOS, from the PROGRAMS menu select CELESTIAL BODY then select the particular planet from the list. From the RECORDING menu select IMAGE MEASUREMENT click on OPEN IMAGE and load the image you want to measure, accurately fill in the date and UTC.

Go to the ADJUST tab and size and orientate the outline to suit, I always do this with the orientation of Sth up and West to the right. Be very accurate with the outline adjustment. Go to the Position tab and you will have a cross hair that will move to any position you indicate on your image. As you move the hover arrow around the image you will see lat and lon changing in the positional boxes above the image, when you have the arrow head on the detail you want the positional data for right click and the coordinates will appear in the positional boxes to the left of your image.

There is a tutorial done by a Japanese observer on the net that helps a lot regarding how to manipulate the outline for the planet.

[hotspur]

Ah-thats how you do it!,thank you for explaining that,you explained it in

such away that it was understanable,i was not at all familar with that program,sounds like a handy tool for what you do.

well done!it really is a pleasure to view your work,I like the web site too,

suprised not many have subscribed to it.

cheers Chris

[daveg]

Excellent images Trevour. Im aware of the amount of processing time thats gone into something like this and it shows great perserverance and skill. Makes me want to get back into the planetary imaging again.
Dont normally have time to surf around but had to comment on this.

DG

[Paul Haese]

Well done Trev. Your missus is gonna kill you with all this fanaticism. As for the images I really like the look of the transit and storm shot. A lovely set of images.

[Quark]

Thanks for taking the time to check out my website Chris and hope my explanation of how I measure my images made sense.



Thanks very much Dave, appreciate your remarks.




Thanks Paul, your not going to believe it, but I didn't image the storm when I should have in the early hours of Sunday March 14th. I was playing in our local Lawn Bowls association champ of champs and thought I might have struggled if I was imaging through to 3:30 that morning.
Mind you, it was hard to give up the opportunity to have another crack at imaging the storm. At least the wife only has to put up with my early morning imaging sessions every 4 nights now, weather permitting. Still, no matter how quite I try to be when I bring my laptop back inside, usually by 4 am after I have packed everything away down in the observatory, I always seem to manage to wake her up. But Like I keep telling her, its all in the cause of science. ;)